Recognising the pilgrim from some far distant land as she looked out of her casement window, the good dame, with the charitable spirit of the age, took him forth some broken victuals and a cup of ale, and inquired what news he brought from over sea. The wanderer, however, seemed more inclined to ask than answer questions, and was apparently full of wonder and amazement at the tragic story--which he had just heard, he said--of the death of the Lady Catherine Beauchamp. He prayed the good woman, for love and for charity's sake, to tell him all about it; and she, very willing to gratify him--for every country gossip gains dignity while telling a horrible tale--began at the beginning of the affair, as far as she knew it; and related how, just on the night after the last Glutton mass, as Childe Richard of Woodville, their lord's nephew, was riding down the road with a friend, he heard a shriek, and, on hurrying to the water, found the body of the poor young lady floating down the stream; how the two gentlemen bore her to the chanter's cottage; and how marks were found upon her person, which seemed to prove that she had come to her death by unfair means. "And has the murderer been discovered, sister?" inquired the old pilgrim. "Alas, no!" replied the reeve's wife; "there have been whispers about, but nothing certain." "Ay, murder will out, sooner or later," answered the pilgrim. "And whom did the whispers point at?" "Nay," replied Dame Julian, "I know not that I ought to say; but, to a reverend man like you, who have visited the shrine of St. James, there can be no harm in speaking of these things, especially as we all know that the whispers are false. Well, then--but you must tell nobody what I say--the lady's own lover--husband, indeed, I might call him, for they were betrothed by holy church--has been accused of having done the deed; but every one who knows Sir Harry Dacre is right sure that he would have sooner cut off both his hands; and, besides, the miller of Clatford Mill told me--'twas but yesterday morning--that, half an hour before sunset, on that very day when all this happened, he saw Sir Harry at his own place, and opened the gate for him to go through. He remembered it, he said, because the knight had torn his hand with a nail in the gate, by trying to open it without dismounting; and as soon as he was through, he rode on towards Wey Hill, which is quite away from here." "Might he not have come back again by some other road?" asked the pilgrim. "No," answered Dame Julian, "not without going four miles round; and, besides, the miller told me that his man Job saw the knight, half an hour after, at the top of Wey Hill, halting his horse, and gazing at the sun setting. Now that's a good way off, and this deed was done just after close of day." "Then that clears him," replied the pilgrim; "but is there no one else suspected?"